


Safe Haven

by onward_came_the_meteors



Series: Brucemas 2020 [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Actual Human Disasters Clint Barton and Bruce Banner, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Fluff, M/M, POV Third Person, Post-Avengers (2012), Protective Clint Barton, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28128942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onward_came_the_meteors/pseuds/onward_came_the_meteors
Summary: In which Clint oversleeps, Bruce is sick, and JARVIS iswaytoo passive-aggressive for an artificial intelligence.
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Clint Barton
Series: Brucemas 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2056074
Comments: 10
Kudos: 33
Collections: Brucemas 2020





	Safe Haven

**Author's Note:**

> Day 4 (wow, already?!?), for the Clint/Bruce pairing and the prompt "for science." I made a little challenge for myself to use that prompt for a ship other than science bros or Bruce/Betty, lol

Clint did not want to wake up.

His body was still aching from yesterday’s mission, Band-Aids only doing so much to cover up the assorted pavement-shaped, broken-window-shaped, and faucet-in-one-of-the-S.H.I.E.L.D.-base-showers-shaped (it was  _ slippery _ in there) bruises. Every time he moved around under the covers, at least one limb or internal organ felt the need to complain at him, and the cold weight of his eyelids told him that he hadn’t gotten nearly enough sleep last night to make up for all the arrow-shooting and public-transport-vehicle-commandeering and falling-off-of-improbably-high-buildings he’d done yesterday.

Unfortunately, JARVIS seemed to be entirely unsympathetic to this fact, as the AI had been unrelentingly reading him the weather report in as loud a voice as his settings would allow for the past twenty minutes.

In fact, Clint was pretty sure JARVIS’s voice was getting louder for every second he ignored him.

Clint shoved the pillow over his head, grumbled a few muffled swears into the mattress, and finally forced himself to sit up while JARVIS was in the middle of reciting the humidity levels in every county of New York. 

“JARVIS, what gives?” he mumbled, working one fist into his eye while the other braced himself upright on the bed. If Tony’s stupid AI was malfunctioning, Clint was going to use his robots for target practice. 

“Apologies, Agent Barton,” JARVIS replied in the least apologetic voice imaginable. Clint would’ve glared if there had been anything to glare at.

(And that was a little creepy, right? He wasn’t the only one who thought so?)

JARVIS continued, still in that very irritatingly calm voice that Clint decided he never wanted to hear until he had been firmly awake for more than thirty seconds, preferably with a decent amount of caffeine in his system. “I assumed that you would prefer to be woken up, considering that you and Doctor Banner are expected to attend a meeting with S.H.I.E.L.D. in approximately seventeen minutes.”

Clint frowned. “What?” He glanced at the clock on the nightstand, blinking its little red numbers. “Shit.”

One of his legs was already freed from the tangle of sheets before something connected in his still-not-all-the-way-awake brain. “Hold up a second. I  _ know _ I set an alarm for this—” the memory was blurry with exhaustion, but he clearly remembered stumbling into the bedroom with his phone in hand, typing on the screen before closing his eyes and suddenly the sun was up “—that’s why I left my aids in.” 

“Sleeping while wearing hearing aids is not recommended by most health officials,” JARVIS remarked.

“No shit, but how else’m I supposed to wake up on time for these things? Plus, these ones’re Stark tech, I don’t really have a problem keeping them in—” Clint’s hand brushed over something small on the bed, and he realized with a wince why his hearing had been so distorted between his two ears. “Okay, I stand corrected.”

He swore JARVIS was giving him a look.

“Whatever,” he muttered. “But why the hell didn’t my alarm go—”

He tilted his phone screen up to his face and was greeted with the dead battery sign.

Naturally.

He swore under his breath a couple more times just as the numbers on the nightstand clock clicked forward from eight to nine and JARVIS’s still-pleasant voice announced, “Sixteen minutes.”

Clint almost fell on his face getting out of bed. A few moments passed in which he stumbled around the room pulling open drawers, rifling through the heap of laundry in the corner, and trying to yank on a pair of pants while JARVIS remained in (the AI didn’t have facial expressions, or a face, but Clint just  _ knew _ ) silent judgement.

“There is not a single sock in this entire bedroom,” Clint said under his breath, half to himself, before his gaze fell upon the blanket-covered shape on the opposite side of the bed, and he realized that his boyfriend was still passed out cold. 

He was glad that Bruce had fallen asleep. Sure, missions were never a picnic for Clint, and sure he always came back with his share of scars that would make great party stories, but he never had the same level of pain that came with ripping and growing and stretching and morphing himself into an entirely new body and back again. Because that was what it was, even if Bruce never admitted it: painful. Clint could see it in the way Bruce stayed in a curled ball in the rubble rather than getting up to find the rest of the team himself, the way he moved slower for a few days and limited his sentences to single words, the way he tensed at physical contact after every transformation—any touch of skin against skin: when Tony would clap him on the shoulder or Thor would offer to help him up the ramp of the jet or Clint would lay a blanket (or a jacket, or a piece of spare uniform, or whatever they had on hand, because Bruce went through clothes like Thor went through coffee mugs and sometimes assembling caught them unprepared) over his shivering form.

(Bruce had stopped flinching at that last one—very, very recently—and Clint had had to restrain himself from punching the air when he’d realized) 

Most especially, he saw it in the way Bruce would look like he was half a nudge away from falling asleep where he stood, like Hulk had sucked up all his energy and poured it into smashing and roaring and… well, more smashing. There would be dark-shadowed eyes and lapses in attention and mumbled “sorry, can you repeat that?”s until Bruce finally reached a bed. Or a couch. Or a vaguely horizontal surface. And even then, he was still sometimes restless, eyes fluttering shut only to pop back open again, the tiny veins ringing the pupils a faint emerald. Clint sympathized—his work as an assassin, a sniper, an agent, a circus performer, probably several other things he was forgetting ( _ Oh yeah, he was an Avenger now too; he supposed he should add that to the list _ ) had led him to his own fair share of sleepless nights. 

That was part of how he’d gotten to know Bruce in the first place—the only two weirdos who were wandering around the roof of the Tower at three A.M. because “maybe the fresh air will help me calm down” (Bruce) and “maybe if I do enough pull-ups off the side of the giant Avengers ‘A,’ I’ll pass out from sheer exhaustion” (Clint).

So, yes; he was relieved that Bruce had managed to get at least a few hours of uninterrupted sleep this time.

But as comfy as Bruce looked, Clint got the feeling that he wouldn’t be too pleased if he became the subject of several irritated emails from S.H.I.E.L.D. He  _ still  _ wasn’t entirely out from under the bus with all the property damage, disregard for government authority, and sporadic public nudity that anyone named Bruce Banner couldn’t really avoid. 

Clint cast another glance around the room, down at himself, back to the clock, and sighed. He still wasn’t wearing a shirt—and he wasn’t sure how to fix that particular problem, because the last time he’d checked, the top half of his uniform had been shredded by acid-spitting aliens, and S.H.I.E.L.D. took their employees arriving in civilian clothes about as well as they took incorrectly filed paperwork, glorified consultants in shiny metal suits poking around in their secured databases, or the concept of Thor—but there didn’t seem to be much he could do about that. 

Maybe Steve had left his laundry hamper unattended. 

Right now, though, he had to embark on an even less desirable mission.

Clint walked around to the other side of the bed and perched on the edge of the mattress. Bruce didn’t react. He gave his shoulder a gentle shake. “Hey, there. Wakey, wakey.”

Bruce mumbled something unintelligible and still didn’t move.

“I should warn you I’m not above throwing things at you. And I’ve been told I have very good aim.”

The blankets shifted around for a moment, and finally Clint was greeted by the sight of brown eyes blinking slowly open as Bruce lifted his head.

“I feel so mean waking you up,” Clint said under his breath, and then, in a normal tone of voice: “Better get moving, Banner, we’re gonna be late.”

Bruce blinked like the information was taking longer than usual to filter through his brain. “We are?”

Clint frowned.  _ Damn, he sounds terrible.  _

_ And speaking of, he kinda looks terrible, too.  _

“You okay there?”

Bruce sat up further, giving Clint an even better view of the bloodshot eyes standing out against paler-than-normal skin. “Yeah.” This was somewhat undermined by his cough almost as soon as the word was out of his mouth, and he hunched in with a guilty look.

Clint shook his head. “You better not get me sick, I have a mission in like two days.”

“You also have a S.H.I.E.L.D. meeting in two minutes.”

“Shit.” That was his word for the day, apparently. “I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t they want both of us?” Bruce started to shake the blankets off himself, but Clint stopped him with a hand.

“Yeah, but I’m giving you a doctor’s note."

Bruce grinned. “That’s ironic.” His voice was hoarse.

JARVIS’s voice issued from the ceiling as Clint was halfway to the door. “Agent Barton, you have several missed calls from—”

“Mute!” Clint called.

“Only Mr Stark has the authority to mute me.”

“Damn it.”

* * *

As he’d suspected, the S.H.I.E.L.D. meeting had been a thinly veiled excuse to yell at him for the “poor judgement” he’d shown in the field. Clint personally thought “poor judgment” was a generous way to describe what had happened, but hey—his training had never covered joint skydiving with the god of thunder, operating large construction vehicles in areas where large construction vehicles were not meant to be operated, getting chased by genetically enhanced electric eels, or flying the Walmart knockoffs of Chitauri bikes made from what had looked like lawn mower scraps. As long as he wasn’t getting fired, he was good.

If any of those… setbacks… had actually made a difference during the fight, Clint might have understood the necessity of the meeting, but as it was, they hadn’t really mattered much in the end. The team had saved the city (for the, what, ninth time now?), all the bad guys had either been arrested or gone down with various bow-and-arrow-related injuries, and the relieved civilians had cheered for the Avengers.

Well, they’d cheered for Iron Man and Captain America. They didn’t know the others’ names.

Clint thought it was very telling that he was the only one getting yelled at, by the way. Natasha had been at  _ least _ as reckless as him during that whole shebang (and  _ he _ hadn’t accidentally set a parking lot on fire), but then again, she’d always been the favorite. Even when she was an out-of-control assassin and he was the schmuck assigned to bring her in. Thor and Tony had done  _ plenty _ of disobeying direct orders—even Steve had, which was saying something considering that he was the one giving the direct orders. Ironically, the only Avenger who’d been on their best behavior yesterday had been Hulk, who’d smashed what needed to be smashed before promptly splashing himself down in a frozen river to wake up as a very wet, very cold, and very naked Bruce.

Come to think of it, that might’ve had something to do with why Bruce was sick now.

Clint opened the door to their bedroom as quietly as he could, intending to grab his phone and sneak back out, but surprisingly, the light was on when he walked in.

Also surprisingly, Bruce was awake, sitting up, and poking at a tablet in his lap that was open to what looked like several diagrams of sciencey-looking things that fell neatly under the category of Things Clint Let Other People Figure Out. 

This time, though, the other person was Bruce, who had dark circles under his eyes and a tissue box balanced at the edge of the nightstand.

Clint leaned forward from the doorway. “Honey, I’m home.”

Bruce’s gaze didn’t move from the screen as he said absently, “Hi, home, I’m—” He looked up and spotted Clint. “Oh, hey.”

“Hey,” Clint echoed. He nodded to the tablet as he stepped further inside. “Whatcha got there?”

“Just trying to narrow down a better stabilizing agent for the micro—” Bruce was interrupted by coughs that lasted a good few seconds before settling down. He put a hand on his throat and looked sheepishly up at Clint. “So… how was your meeting?”

Clint groaned. “I think the Avengers should become a nonaligned entity.”

“Now you sound like Steve.”

Clint shuddered and climbed back up on the bed, Bruce moving over to give him more space. He peered over Bruce’s shoulder to get a better—albeit sideways—view of the screen and tilted his head when he saw that, yes, at first glance its contents looked to be mainly blocks of numbers and chemical formulas, but as his gaze reconfigured itself, it was actually… familiar.

“Why are you doing that?” Clint asked eventually, once it became clear that Bruce was perfectly content with sitting there in almost complete silence besides the tapping of a finger on the screen and the occasional sniff. 

“Because,” Bruce said, and Clint thought for a moment that his boyfriend was going to be insufferable and leave it at that, but after clearing his throat in a way that sounded painful, he continued. “A large part of why yesterday’s mission went so badly could’ve been avoided if the explosives in your arrows had a decent countermechanism.”

Yes, maybe that was what he got for using the backup S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue versions instead of the shiny new Tony-Stark-designed versions that apparently came with the complimentary Avenger-ing package, but his old ones had served him well for years. Even if they had been acting a little touchy ever since that fight against the living fire tsunami…

“That’s not your job,” Clint said. He reached to flick out of the tab Bruce had open, but Bruce shifted it out of his reach.

“Right, I forgot. Pardon me, I’ll be turning into my giant green alter ego now, because that’s all I’m good for around here.” Bruce made a movement as though he was actually going to get up, the blanket over his lap crinkling in half as Clint laughed. There was no real effort put into it, though—usually Bruce would at least let his eyes change to really sell this kind of joke. He liked to freak people out with it, and Clint got a kick out of watching. Especially Steve—it got the best reaction out of Steve (Clint was pretty sure Natasha had a YouTube channel dedicated to it). Bruce must’ve been tired if he wasn’t doing it now.

Sure enough, Bruce’s eyes closed briefly as he laid back against the headboard, his expression slacking for a moment like he actually might fall asleep before straightening up and leaning again over the tablet screen. “Really, though. This isn’t—” He coughed again. “This isn’t something that should wait. Don’t think I missed whatever you did to your shoulder yesterday.”

Clint’s hand reflexively moved to the sore spot in the crook where his shoulder met his back before catching himself with a wince and turning his most innocent gaze on Bruce. “It’s nothing serious.”

“‘Course not. Besides—” Bruce seemed to realize the futility of using the importance of one’s physical health in an argument against Clint Barton, because he gestured vaguely to his screen instead “— _ science _ .”

Clint raised his eyebrows. “The new breakfast in bed?”

“Well, I tried to go down to the lab, but Tony kicked me out.” A petulant expression crossed Bruce’s face for the briefest second, and Clint couldn’t help but grin. He just looked so sick and miserable, yet so determined to do this one thing.

“This is the one time I’m gonna say this, but he’s got a point. Gimme that.” Clint leaned over and plucked the tablet out of Bruce’s hands in one smooth movement. Bruce protested, but nobody outside of Natasha could really beat Clint’s reflexes. Many a Mario Kart tournament had proven this.

Bruce reached to steal it back, but Clint had already slid it over on the far end of the nightstand; Bruce would either have to get out of bed or climb over Clint to get it back, and the likelihood of either was not high.

“It’s gonna fall off,” Bruce objected, but slumped back against the pillow even as he said it.

“Nah.” Clint cast a quick glance over to the tablet, waiting for it to fall off as a direct attack on him. Surprisingly, it stayed put. “Besides, it’s all carpeted down there anyway.”

JARVIS spoke up just then, and Clint wondered if it was because the AI felt a familial obligation to defend other pieces of Stark tech. “If I may, the devices used in this tower are made of extremely durable materials.”

A memory of the time Thor accidentally snapped a TV remote in half filtered through to Clint’s mind. “Yeah, that checks out.”

There was a soft noise from his other side, and Clint turned to see Bruce almost a fifth of a degree away from lying down, burrowing unconsciously into the pillow. He opened his eyes after he must’ve felt Clint staring at him and made the effort to sit up again, but gave up partway through.

“If I stop bugging you, are you gonna sleep or are you gonna keep working?” Clint asked. 

Bruce coughed, a little groaning noise emitting from his throat. “I don’t think either one of those things is happening right now.”

Clint nodded, mostly to himself—Bruce’s eyes had fallen shut again. “Okay.” Bruce was sick, that much was obvious, and that on top of the aftereffects from a Hulk transformation and a huge battle couldn’t have been fun. He needed to go to sleep, and he needed a space free from distractions.

Neither one of those options involved Clint.

He started to push himself off of the bed, only to be stopped by a sleepy, hoarse voice mumbling, “Hey… where’re you going?”

Clint paused in the action right before his feet would’ve hit the floor. “Leaving?”

“D’you mind… not doing that, maybe?” Bruce’s eyes opened halfway, as though realizing how his words might’ve come off. “Only if you don’t mind, I just—”

The rest of his response was broken off by more coughing, but Clint had already spun back around and hoisted himself fully on the bed. Bruce gave a little sigh of what sounded like contentment as the weight shifted on the mattress, and Clint absently brushed a hand over his back.

“Well, if you insist, but I’m not the best company,” he said, keeping his voice low as JARVIS dimmed the lights.

He moved to grab a pillow and prop it behind his head, but something was preventing the movement, and he looked down to see that Bruce had practically latched onto his arm, already most of the way to falling asleep despite his assurances that he wouldn’t. 

(Even barely conscious, Bruce was still careful to avoid Clint’s sore arm; the arm that Clint had to admit might need an ice pack in a little while but for now wouldn’t move for anything)

A smile tugged at Clint’s face, and he shifted so that his other arm wasn’t entirely pinned (functioning limbs were sort of a necessity in his line of work, after all), settling back against the headboard.

Bruce made a noise.

“Oops, am I squishing you?”

“No, it’s okay.” Bruce’s voice was muffled, both from congestion and from the fact that his face was half pressed into the gap between the mattress and the pillow. Clint would have assumed he was trying to avoid the light if he hadn’t shared a bed with Bruce many, many times before, and therefore knew that being exposed while he slept was almost never his preferred option. “I stopped being able to breathe like an hour ago anyway.”

That note of sleepy contentment was still audible in his voice, and Clint grinned as he leaned back against the adjusted pillows. 

It was odd, still, that feeling of being needed—wanted—by another person so implicitly. Clint had never been anything special, had always been just one more agent, one more face in the crowd, one more arrow pointing at a target. Sure, he’d risen up the ranks at S.H.I.E.L.D., but being the person chosen to take out the latest threat to the agency wasn’t the same as being the person chosen to stay by another’s side in a moment of pure, unfiltered vulnerability. Clint might’ve been somewhat of a newcomer to that feeling, but he had to admit… he was enjoying it.

The feeling had seemed to be mutual, when he and Bruce had first started dating—the “out of everyone here, you picked  _ me _ ?” feeling that had slowly, over time, become a bond rather than a burden. One thing had led to another, and now the media was thoroughly enjoying themselves over a photo of the Hulk tenderly brushing an unconscious Clint’s hair out of his face, the on-fire building he’d just rescued him from in the background.

Clint repeated the motion now in reverse, roughened hands as gentle as he could make them as Bruce’s eyes slowly drifted shut. It didn’t seem to stick, though; they would open every time Bruce coughed, and he shifted around, unable to get fully comfortable.

Clint watched these proceedings for a few moments, a frown forming on his face before he got a flash of inspiration. “Hey, JARVIS, put on a movie?”

JARVIS didn’t verbally answer, but the lights obligingly dimmed further as the TV in the corner flickered to life, and Clint caught a glimpse of Bruce’s smile beneath the covers as a familiar theme song filled the room.

Clint put his arm around Bruce, and Bruce nestled closer to Clint, and the afternoon passed with the two of them curled over each other, each their own little safe haven.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
